Huma Qureshi, that underestimated fireball, hardly speaks in ‘Baby Do Die Do’. She doesn’t need to. There are so many chatterboxes around her, including an incredibly devoted suitor for whom every wish of the silently smouldering Baby is his command.
Silence could be a lethal weapon in the right hands. Director Nachiket Samant (who earlier directed the watchable ‘Single Salma’ for the same producers) surrounds the silent shero Baby (Huma Qureshi, provocative and evocative) with the distracting triggers and rigours of Mumbai’s rain-splashed streets.
The outdoor visuals of our Baby with her deadly umbrella are striking, and a smiling nod to cinematographer Tojo Xavier for lensing Mumbai with such vigorous nonchalance.
But the characters outrun their immediacy after a while. The writing (Jasmeet K Reen, Nachiket Samant. Parveez Shaikh, Gaurav Sharma) trips over in trying to stay ahead of itself, and us. There is an attempt to surprise us right till the last shot (where Sonakshi Sinha plays a big hand). After a point, the frenetic pace gets oppressive: we really don’t need to be prodded into excitement all the time. Just slow down, breathe easy, like Baby has been taught to do.
Ironically, Baby, the silent killer, is the only calm character even as the world around her collapses into irredeemable chaos. For a film about a mute shero, the soundtrack is exceptionally saturated. Songs scream about lives with no music, guns go off without warning, knives are squashed into unsuspecting targets, a mother (a living endorsement for matricide) rants ceaselessly, an earless villain — that’s right, Sikandar Kher plays a baddie about whom we cannot say there is no ‘lobe’ lost — makes no bones about his intentions.
Kher’s Zafar Katkar needed to be further explored, and not the least because of the actor that Kher is. Give him half a scene, and he chews it. Give him less than half a scene, he rues it.
There are too many characters clamouring for our attention, doing a dance of death to ensure we remain involved till the end. The most interesting of them is the builder Mulesh Murjhani (played by the ‘Tum Bin’ poster boy Himanshu Malik, now seasoned and bald), who leads a dual life. He is fey by day and gay by night.
Murjhani could have been an engrossing study of over-masculine duality. But he seems a mere pretext, a prop if you will, for producer Salim Saqeeb’s smouldering item song, an ode to the female/gay gaze with a song that goes ‘Alpha Q’. Is that a middle finger to this week’s other release? Say ‘Alfa Q’ out loud, and you will know what I mean.
‘Baby Do Die Do’ is far from the perfect noire thriller that it aspires to be. The theme of a grieving hit woman never quite emerges to be as compelling as it promises. Far more interesting is the love story between the turbaned alpha male, Sidhu (Rachit Singh, confident dependable), and the urban hit woman. They are quite a pair, and mainly for the fact that Sidhu represents the ultimate female fantasy: the perfect soulmate.
The only other interesting female character besides Baby is the cop Anjum Khan, played with gusto by Seema Pahwa. Baby and Anjum wear the same red sneakers only so the cop can identify the killer in a vital sequence. Wish there was more for them to share. Alas, Baby communicates with only her dead sister, like Zoey Deutch in ‘Voicemails To Isabelle’. Though I doubt Baby has heard of Zoey. She is too much the outdoor type to enjoy OTT.
